Every End, A New Beginning
by S. Mark Gunther
Summary: Another fic from Manga 6 Studios. this time, Mousse becomes a father and he's confronted wth his past...in a roundabout way indeed.


Every End, A New Beginning  
By S. Mark Gunther  
  
I guess it's my fault that she left. As much as I'd like to think it wasn't, as much as my friends here would love me to forget that it even might have been, I still know it's my fault she left. And it's tough to deal with. It's even tougher that I'm still here and thriving. It's tougher still that she declaimed that she would never love anyone else again, especially someone as silly and as childish as I.  
  
Normally people drive others away by being there too much. Overstepping their boundaries. Becoming jealous. You know, the little things like that. I drove her away by not supporting her when she needed someone to hold her. For once in my life, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. She responded by leaving. She convinced that old monkey that it was time to go and the biddy took the bait. Just like that, I was losing the one thing I had always wanted.  
  
Sometimes dreams merely die. Mine always seemed to crash and burn.  
  
She did have the right idea, however. She left when she knew she was licked. She left when it was all over. She left when her honor had been extinguished. I, being the dishonorable bastard that I am, couldn't go back. And I didn't want to. Not without her honor and not without my arm around her. It was just too much to ask of her, the idea that she could love me in time. Hell, she was going to have all she could deal with when she got back home.  
  
And so I watched her leave. I watched her leave and she barely said goodbye. The old crone even said more to me than she did. And for that, I was able to give Cologne my highest respect again as a person. She at least acknowledged that I was far too good for her great-granddaughter. Or far too stupid. Whichever came first. She tried to make it sound stern and serious but the smile in her eyes and the sad look on her face told me more then ever. So it made it a lot easier to know I was going to stay here, alone, nearly penniless and without any marketable skills. Nothing that is, except my kitchen skills.  
  
At first I thought it strange that she turned over more and more of the cooking duties to me as time passed on. She passed it off by trying more and more arcane schemes with Shampoo to gain Ranma's hand in marriage. But soon she spent more time then normal with me. Her droning voice in my ear and the feeling of her cane against my back kept me learning but it was the subtly serious look in her eyes that teetered me on the edge. It both unnerved and delighted me that she was teaching and reeducating me the skills I learned as a boy. When I watched her and my love leave, I figured it out.  
  
The old biddy was setting me up for when she'd leave. She knew I couldn't and wouldn't come back to the village so she made sure I had the skills I would need to get a decent job here and start over. Her final words rang in my ears as I walked back to the Nekohanten to pack my things: "You're on your own now. Get a job, get over my great-granddaughter and make something out of yourself."  
  
The bitter rasp in her voice stung as I realized that she had jettisoned me in a hostile sea called Japan. And yet, as I went for my first job interview I knew I could do all right for myself. The chef looked me up and down, insulted me at my first demonstration attempt and then marveled as I corrected the mistake better then he could. I knew I had suckered him in just right. The job was mine and with it came respect and diligent study through work.  
  
I found the joy in work again. I felt good coming off of a shift at work. It was painful losing her and painful getting over her, but everyone else in the kitchen I worked in had dealt with it. It made it easier to deal when I immersed myself in my work. Scrambling to pay my bills, making my money stretch further then I thought it could, all of it made me stronger inside. The iron in my backbone became tempered steel as the days and the months passed. I could deal.  
  
The therapeutic joy I discovered in my work also made the times when I couldn't deal so much more able to be weathered. The long nights I spent alone walking the streets seemed almost therapeutic. I cursed the sky, the gods, my poor luck, and my bad eyesight, everything in sight. I cried in bushes and drank with salary workers in corner bars. I did the things only older men do before I had even passed my 18th birthday. So when the morning came when I realized that I didn't miss Shampoo anymore, that I didn't care if she lived or died, had children or remained frigid and barren, I turned a cartwheel and cried like a little girl. Tears of joy.  
  
Years passed. I went to college and got a diploma in Chinese history. Ranma and Akane got married and moved to Kyoto to escape the Nerima whirlpool that had formed around them. The shotgun elopement they had was so sudden and so downright unexpected that it threw everyone for a loop. Everyone except me, for I was Ranma's best man. By that time, he and I had buried the hatchet and were nearly best friends. Soon I realized just how much pain was in Ranma's heart and I helped him mature and grow as I had to on my own. I gave him a friendship to grow on, something I never had and always longed for. Because of it, I found myself looking down the barrel of my post teenage life with more hope and optimism then ever before. By twenty-three I was happy and looking forward to going forward.  
  
Then she had to go and die. That bitch. The silly cunt had to go off and be little miss hero for the village. Apparently, she had shacked up with some male who already had a fiancée and got pregnant by him. While I was exorcising her demons from my life, she was bringing another life into the world. Things came to a head and she confronted the woman her child's father was involved with. They fought. She lost. She died to save her own shaky honor and the honor of her child. Now that child was coming to me. The amazons did not want her. Her biological father did not want her. So I became her father, pursuant to the suggestion of Cologne.  
  
I'm not ready to become a father. Shit, I barely am able to take care of myself from day to day! Sure I dress well, work hard, maintain a tidy and well-kept house but my internal life is a fly by night, no strings attached kind of existence. I'm recently engaged and just now beginning to deal with the issues of living with someone else. And now I have to take another person into my life. A child, and an impressionable tomboy at that, knowing the Amazon family system. And yet...hearing that she was my former love's child made me thaw the part of my heart I had frozen over. It hurt to remember all the pain I had put myself through and yet knowing I was going to carry on her legacy was not the worst thing in my mind to deal with.  
  
She's coming today. My life changes today. Oh, fuck! I'm not ready...  
  
***  
  
Mousse stared at the busy runway and sighed. His mind rattled with the thoughts that seemed to reverberate endlessly in his head. The life he was now leaving flashed before his eyes as he waited for his ward to come off the plane. He didn't know what the little girl would look like, what she'd act like, how she'd react to now being the ward of a man who only loved her mother. His hand shivered slightly as he looked at the people coming off the plane.  
  
"Feeling nervous, Mousse?" Nabiki asked softly, her left hand intertwined with his right and adorned with a small yet tasteful wedding band.  
  
"Yup."  
  
"I could imagine."  
  
"But that's all you can do. Imagine. I have to live this." A sigh escaped his lips as he noticed the last passengers coming off the plane.  
  
"Sure. But I have to help you with this. I mean, you did ask me out and became engaged to me and whatnot," Nabiki said glibly as she gripped Mousse's big hand in hers. As much as Nabiki liked to tease him, her heart melted for him as she gazed up at his reaction. She had fallen deeply in love with the Chinese male after he had graduated from college. Now, she was going to hopefully marry the man who had convinced her to give up trying to be 'little miss mess cleaner' and deal with her own pain. She knew that his heart ached and cracked and she longed to make it all better for him.  
  
"I know..." Suddenly, Mousse let go of Nabiki's hand and ran forward. A small girl emerged from the tunnel being lead by a woman who looked very similar to Mousse. The two similar looking people embraced and smiled broadly. Mousse couldn't help himself as tears of joy flowed down his cheeks as he hugged his sister. "I didn't think you'd come, Ai Xiado..."  
  
"Sure I'd come, Muu. You're my brother. And you're about to become a father. I wouldn't miss this for the world," Eyeshadow said with a broad smile. She handed Mousse a small suitcase and looked down at the girl with a smile. "Mousse, this is Po Xian."  
  
"You look like my daddy," Po said shyly as she looked up at the man who was to become her new father.  
  
"I do?" Mousse replied softly. Po shook her head affirmatively and hugged Eyeshadow's legs tightly.  
  
"Goodbye auntie," Po said with a twinge of emotion in her young voice.  
  
"Well, I'm not leaving you just yet, little one," Eyeshadow said as she looked at Mousse. "You think you have room at your place for me for a night or two?"  
  
"When does your plane leave?"  
  
"3 days from now, but I might try to leave in 2. I just need some time away from the village...to think about things..." Eyeshadow's voice trailed off into the distance a little as she stopped speaking and she smiled as she felt Mousse's hand on her shoulder.  
  
"It's totally fine if you stay around a while. Mayhaps we can decide on a few other things while you're here," Mousse replied as he turned and looked at Nabiki. "Nabiki, come on over and meet Potion..."  
  
***  
  
Nabiki sighed and waited for the water to boil in the small coffee pot. Her hands shook a little as she looked around the small yet efficiently situated kitchen. The gas flame roared and the simmering sounds of the water in motion threatened to soothe her into a peaceful and placid state of being. And yet with every wandering footstep of her mind in her mind, she kept coming back to the state of affairs she was in. Her main thoughts still centered around Mousse and his new ward.  
  
She remembered with a smile that he seemed more then a little bit fatherly as they went out for dinner after leaving the airport. Little Potion was well behaved and very observant of her table manners as they ate, and the evening was both pleasant and refreshingly devoid of tension and acrimony. And yet, when she caught Mousse's eye, the sparkle that had regenerated in his eyes during the time she knew him intimately seemed oddly muted. Almost as if the screensaver in his face had been paused by an unseen hand. A man in slow motion. She didn't like the idea that the bright and vibrant young man she fell in love with was beginning to worry about the things any father would worry about.  
  
The whistling kettle shook Nabiki out of her reverie and she poured it into the teapot with a steady hand. She brought the pot into the kitchen and set it down at the low table. The room was lit with candles in strategic places and the entire glow seemed to be emanating from the fire and reverberating from all the corners and crevices in the room. The warmth seemed to rise up slowly from the vents and a soft din of sound from the streets below could still be heard from the paper-thin walls. It was as much her home now as it was Mousse's and she loved being here. But as she put the teapot down, she couldn't shake the feeling that days far darker then any she had dealt with in her own house were arising.  
  
"I see you've made the tea," Mousse said softly, his lean body leaning against the doorframe leading to the hallway.  
  
"I have. Come join me," Nabiki replied softly, her normally stripped down voice taking on an even more curt and direct tone. Mousse obliged and sat next to her at the low table. He poured his own tea after she had served herself and for a long moment they did not speak. Each sipped their tea and formulated their thoughts into tangible strings.  
  
"You've been very quiet, Nabiki."  
  
"I have reason to be."  
  
"You don't want me to have Potion here..."  
  
"That's not it, Muu Tzu. You know that."  
  
"Then what is it, Nabiki?"  
  
"I..." Nabiki started to speak her many jumbled thoughts but fell silent as she decided to retreat and try again. "I'm just worried about your ability to take care of a child. You're working, and finishing up school...and you simply do not have the time for the girl who needs your attention and your love. You can give the love but in my opinion you can't give the time. Not right now."  
  
"I couldn't give the time to you at first, Nabiki. And you wormed your sneaky little way into my heart. I don't think it's that much harder to do with a child," Mousse replied quietly as he put his teacup down and rubbed at his eyes. The eye surgery that he had endured had improved his vision greatly but to read and work he still needed to wear glasses. As a result the headaches that seemed to pop up at the most inopportune moments seemed to knock him down to his knees with their strength. And now was definitely an inopportune moment. "This is the last link to Shampoo that I have, Nabiki. I must try to be a good father for Potion."  
  
"I'm not a child, Mousse. I work and go to school as well. I understand how it is. But how will your daughter deal with the fact that her new daddy is too tired to play with her? Or too exhausted to help her with her homework? And have you even begun to consider the idea that she might not understand life here in Tokyo?" Nabiki couldn't help that the words that tumbled out were bitter toned and startlingly aggressive. She felt herself clutch at the leg of the table with one hand as a nervous reaction.  
  
"I'll work it out."  
  
"That's it? That's all you've taken the time to think of? You'll just 'work it out'?"  
  
"That's all that needs to happen. It needs to be worked out. Potion is a part of my life now, for better or for worse. If she wants to go home to China, I'll find a way to get her there. If she cries from being homesick I shall hold her and kiss away her tears. If she has problems fitting in I'll help her as best I can. But I can't let go of her now. Just like I can't let go of you." Mousse smiled sadly as he finished speaking, the worry lines in his face now becoming more evident despite his apparent lack of surprise or even concern.  
  
"You know you're a bad liar, Mousse..." Nabiki said softly with her own sad little smile. Both laughed softly for a moment as the first of many storms passed over their heads. "I'm sorry I snapped at you. I...I'm probably more nervous about you becoming a father then you are."  
  
"Are you kidding? I'm scared shitless. I have no idea what I'm doing and not a damn clue about the best things to do for Potion. Or myself. Or you."  
  
"All you need to do when you worry about me is remember that I can do it on my own. I'm a modern Japanese woman and I don't need anyone to take care of me," Nabiki replied with a flip voice and a playful smile, her normally cheerful demeanor beginning to break through the clouds on her face.  
  
"But you do need someone to love you. And someone to love. I apparently fit the bill."  
  
"1 carat certainly says so, better then any flight of fancy that you could come up with," Nabiki said as she leaned over to kiss Mousse's lips. For a long moment they embraced and kissed, nearly knocking over the tea and the table as they leaned. Finally mindful of the situation they were in, they separated and rose from the table. Walking to the small studio couch that sat in the corner of the room, both held hands and sat down together. Soon Mousse lay out on his back and Nabiki climbed to the top of his well built yet toned body. Their kissing began once again as they settled, soft and passionate yet urgent and needy. Their hands stayed locked in the positions they had always been in ever since their first kiss so many months ago.  
  
"You're still as sweet as ever," Mousse said with a satisfied smile.  
  
"I'm a woman. Women are sweet to the taste and honey on the tongue of those who love them."  
  
"I see that book of French poetry I gave you for your birthday is being put to good use..."  
  
"Yes it is." Both young people smiled and continued to caress one another softly. The house began to settle into a silent sleep as the rest of the outside world slowed down. At least, that's what it appeared to do to the two lovers on the studio couch as they gazed lovingly in one another's eyes.  
  
"I've got my sister here in my room, Potion and she are both sleeping in my bed and I'm making out with my fiancée on the couch we're about to sleep on. What are the odds that this would've happened to me if I has stayed with Shampoo?" Mousse mused out loud in a soft reflective voice.  
  
"Not good."  
  
"Not good?"  
  
"Yes. Especially considering you were still madly in love with Shampoo and she didn't think of you as anything more then a casual friend..."  
  
"I guess you're right."  
  
"But aren't you happier now that you have a beautiful career woman in your life and a beautiful young daughter to raise as your own? And we don't even have to buy baby food! Not right now, at least..." Nabiki trailed off in her speech as she felt Mousse's hands on her rear, caressing her and tenderly loving her.  
  
"I guess I am happier..."  
  
"Then show me how happy you are...let's fall asleep together here, arm in arm, Mousse-san..." The pair kissed again as their bodies shut down with the stresses of the day bleeding off. Soon their vision began to blur as their kisses became slower and their touches trailed off into suspended animation. In time, the pair drifted off into a sleep fraught with interesting dreams, furtive glances and hopeful thoughts. 


End file.
